I read 'The Conspiracy Against the Human Race' and found it incredibly powerful writing. For me as a reader, it was less impactful as philosophy than as one writer's ultimate confessional: an absolute horror story, where the self is the monster.

We're all born storytellers. It's part of the species. But, more specifically, I suppose a particular combination of sensitivity and trauma made me a writer: an essential disquiet with reality, which required exploration through portrayal.

It's your job to come up with compelling characters who speak to an individual authenticity. If I'm not interested in the characters, I can't go on. I have to be fascinated by them.

I grew up in a working-class Catholic family in south Louisiana. I went to a state university. I taught literature, wrote a novel that was the novel I wanted to write, and got a couple of good reviews but no real traction. I had no idea how to get a job in TV.

I'm patient when it comes to my career, which is unlike me, but there are no stars in my eyes. I make where I go. It's that sort of thing.

People don't really have a relationship with great writing or great production or great art direction or great direction. They just sort of admire it.

If you get your foot in the door doing one kind of part, that's the kind of role they call you for. I can't say I resent it - then I would resent my whole career.

I've always been about learning. No matter how long I've been in the business or where I've been in a company, I've always wanted to continue to learn.